[Footnote: Reprinted from the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and
Scientific Methods, vol. ii. No. 5, March 2, 1905.]
Humanism is a ferment that has 'come to stay.' It is not a single
hypothesis or theorem, and it dwells on no new facts. It is rather a
slow shifting in the philosophic perspective, making things appear
as from a new centre of interest or point of sight. Some writers are
strongly conscious of the shifting, others half unconscious, even though
their own vision may have undergone much change. The result is no small
confusion in debate, the half-conscious humanists often taking part
against the radical ones, as if they wished to count upon the other
side. [Footnote: Professor Baldwin, for example. His address 'Selective
Thinking' (Psychological Review, January, 1898, reprinted in his volume,
'Development and Evolution') seems to me an unusually well written
pragmatic manifesto. Nevertheless in 'The Limits of Pragmatism' (ibid;
January, 1904), he (much less clearly) joins in the attack.]
If humanism really be the name for such a shifting of perspective, it
is obvious that the whole scene of the philosophic stage will change
in some degree if humanism prevails. The emphasis of things, their
foreground and background distribution, their sizes and values, will not
keep just the same. [Footnote: The ethical changes, it seems to me, are
beautifully made evident in Professor Dewey's series of articles, which
will never get the attention they deserve till they are printed in a
book. I mean: 'The Significance of Emotions,' Psychological Review,
vol. ii, 13; 'The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology,' ibid; iii, 357;
'Psychology and Social Practice,' ibid., vii, 105; 'Interpretation
of Savage Mind,' ibid; ix, 2l7; 'Green's Theory of the Moral Motive,'
Philosophical Review, vol. i, 593; 'Self-realization as the Moral
Ideal,' ibid; ii, 652; 'The Psychology of Effort,' ibid; vi, 43;
'The Evolutionary Method as Applied to Morality,' ibid; xi, 107,353;
'Evolution and Ethics,' Monist, vol. viii, 321; to mention only a few.]
If such pervasive consequences be involved in humanism, it is clear that
no pains which philosophers may take, first in defining it, and then in
furthering, checking, or steering its progress, will be thrown away.
It suffers badly at present from incomplete definition. Its most
systematic advocates, Schiller and Dewey, have published fragmentary
programmes only; and its bearing on many vital philosophic problems has
not been traced except by adversaries who, scenting heresies in advance,
have showered blows on doctrines--subjectivism and scepticism, for
example--that no good humanist finds it necessary to entertain. By their
still greater reticences, the anti-humanists have, in turn, perplexed
the humanists. Much of the controversy has involved the word 'truth.'
It is always good in debate to know your adversary's point of view
authentically. But the critics of humanism never define exactly what the
word 'truth' signifies when they use it themselves. The humanists have
to guess at their view; and the result has doubtless been much beating
of the air. Add to all this, great individual differences in both camps,
and it becomes clear that nothing is so urgently needed, at the stage
which things have reached at present, as a sharper definition by each
side of its central point of view.
Whoever will contribute any touch of sharpness will help us to make sure
of what's what and who is who. Any one can contribute such a definition,
and, without it, no one knows exactly where he stands. If I offer my own
provisional definition of humanism now and here, others may improve it,
some adversary may be led to define his own creed more sharply by the
contrast, and a certain quickening of the crystallization of general
opinion may result.
The essential service of humanism, as I conceive the situation, is to
have seen that THO ONE PART OF OUR EXPERIENCE MAY LEAN UPON ANOTHER PART
TO MAKE IT WHAT IT IS IN ANY ONE OF SEVERAL ASPECTS IN WHICH IT MAY
BE CONSIDERED, EXPERIENCE AS A WHOLE IS SELF-CONTAINING AND LEANS
ON NOTHING. Since this formula also expresses the main contention
of transcendental idealism, it needs abundant explication to make it
unambiguous. It seems, at first sight, to confine itself to denying
theism and pantheism. But, in fact, it need not deny either; everything
would depend on the exegesis; and if the formula ever became canonical,
it would certainly develop both right-wing and left-wing interpreters.
I myself read humanism theistically and pluralistically. If there be a
God, he is no absolute all-experiencer, but simply the experiencer of
widest actual conscious span. Read thus, humanism is for me a religion
susceptible of reasoned defence, tho I am well aware how many minds
there are to whom it can appeal religiously only when it has been
monistically translated. Ethically the pluralistic form of it takes for
me a stronger hold on reality than any other philosophy I know of--it
being essentially a SOCIAL philosophy, a philosophy of 'CO,' in which
conjunctions do the work. But my primary reason for advocating it is its
matchless intellectual economy. It gets rid, not only of the standing
'problems' that monism engenders ('problem of evil,' 'problem of
freedom,' and the like), but of other metaphysical mysteries and
paradoxes as well.
It gets rid, for example, of the whole agnostic controversy, by refusing
to entertain the hypothesis of trans-empirical reality at all. It gets
rid of any need for an absolute of the bradleyan type (avowedly sterile
for intellectual purposes) by insisting that the conjunctive relations
found within experience are faultlessly real. It gets rid of the need
of an absolute of the roycean type (similarly sterile) by its pragmatic
treatment of the problem of knowledge. As the views of knowledge,
reality and truth imputed to humanism have been those so far most
fiercely attacked, it is in regard to these ideas that a sharpening of
focus seems most urgently required. I proceed therefore to bring the
views which I impute to humanism in these respects into focus as briefly
as I can.